


Quiet And I Hate the Sound

by watchthestarsfall



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Canon Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Drug Abuse, M/M, WIP, Warnings TBA As Needed, Wingfic, hope this isn't as confusing as it is in my head
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watchthestarsfall/pseuds/watchthestarsfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A world of wings and John Watson still can't find anything better to do than chase criminals through dark alleys with a madman.<br/>(well, it's a bit more than that, but we'll get there eventually)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. what of beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine.

_Excert Of Wings and Genealogy by Arthur Esland_

Humanoid winged appendages are one of the most diversified traits of genetics…more individualized than eyes. No pair of wings is ever identical…The gifts that accompany them, however, are suspect to certain lineages and pigmentation.

The postclassical age Mongols had streaked brown and black wings and possessed an incredible propensity towards strategy and battle prowess. The New World Inca were characterized by flashing, indigo wings, and Old World explorers raved of their “future sight” in many journals and letters…the direct connection between metaphysical or superhuman gifts to specific types of wings has been studied and explored throughout the ages to little effect…yet it is clear that certain hues exhibit certain types of gifts and these traits carry traceably through bloodlines.

…Among much of the mystery and intrigue surrounding wings exists a persistent myth. Of all the billion shades, there is one revered above all: White. … Contemporary Alaologists believe the magical properties thought to come with the color are either imagined or greatly exaggerated in historical texts. Regardless, such a color has not been seen in decades…

* * *

 

 

> **i.**

Cold, unrepentant hands are on his back, and then, his shoulders. It’s dark in this basement. The overhead light is a mere bulb, and its sparse light continues to flicker.

The hands dig in and soon they’re not alone, but escorted by broken, dirty scissors that creak and screech as they swing open and closed. It hurts. He shrieks in the painful way of children, and a hurried _shh_ whispers for him to be quiet.

“You mustn’t cry, Johnny. You mustn’t make a sound. Listen to mommy, honey, please.” Her voice is high with anxiety to the point of breaking, yet still she pulls and scrapes and _cuts_.

John wants her to stop. More than anything in his five years, he wants her to _stop_. He bats at her hands and her embrace, but his arms are a child’s—thin and soft. He is small and she is so much stronger.

“Stop fighting me,” she hisses, and the panic transfuses through her to him.

He can barely think in the haze of it all. His mind screams _wrong wrong wrong_ as his body cries out in wordless agony because everything is pain and it won’t stop, she won’t stop, even as he cries and yells, she muffles him with the meat of her palm, but he can’t take it, it will surely break him if she continues, she must know this because he is screaming to her how much it _hurts_ and—

There’s a snap, a cracking, split like thunder, then a wet crunch, and John’s mother releases him.

He falls to the freezing basement floor and cannot manage to stay silent.

_Gone_.

His hands scramble madly against his back, searching and searching, but the expected fleecy down is missing. In its place lies wet, sticky liquid, warm to the touch, and matted, broken feathers over twisted bone.

“I had to do it. You have to understand, Johnny,” she whispers fervently, but as she steps closer, opening her arms to comfort her child, he scampers back, dragging the ruins of pure, white wings and smearing dark red blood across the tile.

She flinches, eyes fragile and unsure. “You’ll understand,” she says desperately, “when you’re older. When you see how this world is.”

He watches, trying to fight off the cooling darkness behind his eyes, and manages to shake his head. She is wrong. This—what she’s done—it is unforgivable. _Never_ , he thinks, _I will never understand_.

In the flickering, dim light, her short, brown wings spread shakily “I’m protecting you.” She drops the bleeding scissors from her hands. They hit the floor like a bullet against glass. “I _love_ you, John,” she insists, and then she’s swooping down, wrapping her arms and feathers around his prone body. He struggles, but it barely makes a difference.

“I’ll never hurt you, Johnny,” she murmurs against his neck. “Believe me.”

John floats away on the rushed insistencies of her apologies.

 

> **ii.**

“What are you doing here, cutiepie?”

Flashing, silver eyes stay rooted to the hole in the ground outside the Holmes manor.

This blatant dismissal does nothing to dissuade the woman from squatting in the grass before him, effectively obscuring the view of his most recent experiment. She smiles sloppily and seems unaffected by his glare (the effects from the alcohol coursing through her, lowing whatever little IQ she previously retained).

“Busy,” Sherlock snaps. The grimace on his face is not at all childlike or adorable, yet the annoying woman giggles as if his anger is merely _cute_.

This is why he detests parties.

The Holmes family is not a friendly one. There are suits and manners instead of cuddling or pet names. They live in a world of diamond and ebony, cut clear as crystal if still inclined to the shadows.They are old-fashioned, surely, and as unwelcoming as wealth can afford. The men are all august in nature and grand in airs. The woman—dark-haired and gossip-prone like most upper-class trophy wives. It is downright tedious, really. The way they dance for society throwing on facades and using bluster and artifice for the sake of showing off. These bi-monthly parties at the estate, for example, are kept in place to maintain social standing or some such bollocks. Unfortunately, they only seem to attract the dull, the loud and the interfering.

As he stares into the guest’s flushed, pink face, sloppy make-up and slightly disheveled hair, Sherlock decides she falls into all three categories. She’s a young woman (about Mycroft’s age) and wears a slinky, diamond encrusted dress. Her wings are bright, burning red. A telepath, then. Sherlock adjusts his shields accordingly.

“Your brother is an absolute _cheat_ at cards,” she declares fiercely, tipping slightly forward. Her wings struggle to compensate for her balance. They’re big enough that she should’ve been flying for years, yet the way she struggles and almost falls face first into the grass cannot just be attributed to tipsiness. Sheltered, possibly—overprotective parents.

“Mycroft does not cheat,” Sherlock bites out. _Not at cards at least_. “You must have incredibly dreadful skills.”

She frowns.

Sherlock blinks placidly.

“Well that’s not nice at all,” she mutters loudly, “Prat.”

His face refuses to move.

After a few moments of cold staring, the girl rises, wings fluttering. “You’re a strange bugger, aren’t you?”

Sherlock doesn’t bother dignifying that with a reply, just refixes his eyes on the pit in the ground.

“Your mum said to watch out for you. Said you’d escaped.”

Apparently not well enough, if one first-time drunk could find him by stumbling around outside the house.

“I feel bad for your brother, having to deal with such a—”

“Are you incapable of flying or just too scared to try?” He asks casually.

Thank god, the annoying woman finally shuts up. It’s almost too much of a relief for Sherlock to feel smug when she storms off a second later.

Regrettably, he only has a minute to smirk to himself before a dark-suited silhouette steps forth from the shrubbery surrounding the house.

Immediately, his mood sours.

_Mycroft._

“That was unnecessary,” his brother says stiffly.

Sherlock can’t prevent his face from twisting into a sneer. “Upset I offended your date?”

Cool as always (infuriatingly so), Mycroft does not rise to the bait. Instead he steps further out of the shadows and into the moonlight.

In this position, with the sky clear and bright, Sherlock can see his brother’s wings. The crisp midnight black restrained carefully and professionally behind the back at the shoulder. They are large (Sherlock remembers a time when he was smaller and Mycroft would submerge them both in midnight feathers—it’s been a long time since then) and big enough to carry his brother’s growing weight.

Sherlock is not jealous. He reminds himself of this as they study each other. Mycroft in his unwrinkled suit and superiority, looking down his nose at Sherlock without a hair or feather out of place.

“I would appreciate it if you refrained from playing with poisonous fungi,” Mycroft says with a glance at the mushrooms in the hole in the ground.

“I’m not _playing_ ,” Sherlock retorts. _And you can stay out of my business_.

Mycroft shakes his head. “Mummy is asking after you. The party is winding down. She expects your return presently.”

Sherlock sniffs dismissively. “I don’t care.”

Mycroft levels a guarded look that resists Sherlock’s understanding. The cicadas churn and sing in the silence—

“Do come in soon, Sherlock,” Mycroft advises (commands). The older boy doesn’t wait for a response (acquiescence nor dispute) before striding back towards the manor doors.

_Stupid_ , Sherlock thinks, digging his hands into the dirt. So what if Mycroft is the perfect son? The model gentlemen? The cake-stuffing silver tongue—Sherlock doesn’t need to be. Sitting out here in his dressing gown and sleep clothes, watching the patch of _Clitoche dealbata_ he found yesterday in the yard is so much more interesting than entertaining idiots with a false smile and greased-back hair.

Sherlock is much better off, he decides succinctly.

In the cool breeze, his wings ruffle back. They’re still more fluffy, dark down than strong, pointed feathers—not even fully black but spotted gray on the tips. Sherlock stretches out his back, pushing the reach of his wingspan. His wings strain and burn slightly but barely reach past his shoulders. They’ll grow, he knows that. His mother has shown him pictures of Mycroft with puffy wings not good for much more than stuffing, and he’s fully capable of flight now. It’s just a matter of waiting.

Quietly, as the moon retreats behind new clouds, Sherlock wonders when he’ll be able to feel the air beneath him, or the breeze through his hair and the city below his eyes. It all seems very far away and unbelievable. Too good to be true, perhaps—unattainable.


	2. further into the deep

> **i.**

John is nine when he beats up a classmate for calling him “unnatural.” It’s not the first name he’s ever been called, and Avery Collins is not the last bully he has to punch (and kick and push and jab) just to get them to shut their thick, stupid mouths.

It’s not really fair, but even if no one knows the truth behind his bare back, there’s plenty of rumor to compensate for the mystery.

Harry and John’s father don’t even understand the whole of it. All they’re aware of is that when Mrs. Watson was pregnant, she disappeared, and when she returned, it was with a young, quiet and wingless John. She left soon after, dropping John into his father’s custody, and hasn’t been seen since.

“Your mother was troubled,” John’s father had said once, “You must understand that she loved us—in her own way.”

_Harry only shook her head in return and muttered dark things under her breath._

_John felt the prick of ghost pains across his back and squeezed his mouth shut._

More than just the kids at school, _everyone_ John crossed paths with would stare at the empty space behind his shoulders. Then, they’d either look away piteously or glower at him as if it were _John’s_ fault.

He can’t say that it didn’t hurt.

He can’t say that he didn’t wish for a pair of wings of his own. They didn’t need to be special—not vibrant blue or green—any color or shape would do as long as they were _there._ As long as he could feel the weight on his back and the feathers against skin, wood, linens, walls, _everything_ —well, John imagined he would give anything for that feeling.

But Watsons are not made for ducking heads, whining or silent tears. They are stubborn, strong and refuse to be bested, even in the most dire of circumstances. _That_ John learns from his father and not some fading ghost of his mother.

So, he fights.

It starts when he’s nine then continues in varying frequency all the way up to uni (a miracle he gets in at all).

The blood and the staccato pump of his heart against his chest starts to feel like home. He sets up his bedroom in the sensation of flesh against flesh and makes his bed in the shades of blood washing down the drain. In the burn of strained muscles and the desperation of victory, he lies down to rest and sleeps.

The fight is more familiar to him than the color of his sister’s eyes or the comforting touch of his father.

It is almost as steadfast and constant as his hate—his righteous fury, boiling just beneath the surface and ready to burst forth at the right provocation. ( _Some things are unforgivable_.)

John Watson thinks he’s settled into his place (alone—bottom tier—surrounded by vicious whispering—always found wanting). He thinks he knows his world in great resigned certainty, but he is wrong.

When John Watson turns thirteen, the tortured remnants of aborted bone and shredded feathers begin to heal, and then, without any great announcement or declaration, they begin to grow.

> **ii.**

Sherlock hates the monotony of his life.

His parents will force him to go to his classes. His classes will be obvious (the teachers superfluously smug and the students unbearably stupid). Sherlock will escape (easily but imaginatively) His parents will make threats (the hopeless kind from those without real power). Mycroft will step in (vexingly), reprimand and threaten him (in actually effective ways). Sherlock will sulk (or turn manic, which is infinitely worse for everyone concerned), and the whole cycle will repeat again.

There are interludes to this contrived dance: forced family parties, involuntary socializing and ultimately doomed attempts to fix him into upstanding society.

It’s so dreadfully boring, it’s suffocating.

“You cannot just sit on your bed all day.”

Sherlock lets his head roll on his neck to face Mycroft. The git is imposing upon the doorway, looking entirely too exasperated and put upon.

“Why ever not, Mycroft?” He asks drolly. Mycroft’s enormous ego is taking up far too much space in Sherlock’s room. “What better do I have than to rot here? It’s as good a place as any.”

The challenge falls flat. “Don’t be melodramatic,” Mycroft derides instead.

 _Sherlock_ isn’t the one looming in the shadow of an alcove dressed in entirely black with (what absurdity is this?) an umbrella.

He doesn’t say this, but, of course, Mycroft knows.

His brother sighs morosely, then leans against the doorframe, propped up by his silly umbrella. “Mummy isn’t happy with you.”

As if Sherlock does not know.

The displeasure of his parents is as extant as the air—so perpetual it becomes irrelevant.

“What’s the _point,_ Myrcoft?” Sherlock breathes.

It is quiet as his brother disassembles these words, breaks them down to their base parts then reassembles them again.

Sherlock doesn’t expect much from the answer, yet he can’t help but latch onto his brother’s face, fingers stilling in anticipation. He doesn’t know what answer he wants to hear. It’s a question whose solutions lay beyond his comprehension—almost as annoying as Mycroft himself.

But Sherlock can’t keep himself from pondering it now, in these empty, wasting days. Everything is easy, and what is effortless is worthless. He doesn’t bother going to uni because the books, teachers and students long ceased to offer him stimulation. What he doesn’t know, he will not discover in dry lectures or amidst the hounds of puberty.

Yet, what else is there?

His mind whirls relentlessly. It is unceasing in its energy, and with nothing to distract it or occupy its attention, slowly, Sherlock knows, it will devour him.

What’s the point of pretending otherwise? What’s the point of endeavoring to prolong this torment? What’s the point in trying to be _normal_?

He thinks of the unobtrusive, tiny package beneath his bed and closes his eyes.

“I will return to my classes after the break,” Sherlock says in the empty space he has left, because it would seem not even Mycroft knows the answer to these questions.

The skepticism blares loudly in the answering silence.

“I’ve an experiment,” Sherlock lies smoothly, “in the amount of time it takes to drive a professor with absolutely no experience in their field but a penchant for hazing and intimidation to a mental break.” He has already accomplished this feat (a few times over), but once more would not yet be excess.

The wall creaks as Mycroft straightens, brushing off his already immaculate suit and flicking out his wings brusquely. “I will expect you there,” he says dourly, supplemented by the tacit threat of omniscience and the consequences of failure

Sherlock waves his hand at him, and in a few minutes, the room is no longer choked by uptight condescension.

He sits up immediately, stirring rumpled, disheveled wings up and over his shoulders like a dog raising their hackles.

They’re large now. No longer does he have to stretch and press to get them to extend beyond his shoulders. He has grown accustomed to the long pointed feathers with sharp, dagger-like edges. (Mummy once called them dashing. Father once called them frightening. The tantrum Sherlock had thrown after ensured they never called his wings anything ever again.)

Sherlock lets them drape around him like a cape. His brother always frowns when he does this. Wings should be held tight, against the back, in order to be as unobtrusive as possible. It’s common courtesy, he would say. Sherlock has never concerned himself with anything related to commonness or courtesy.

The ends of his primaries to his mid-secondaries are tinged gray, like smoke. The muscles underneath and in his shoulders are thin but strong.

He has flown on them many times. The novelty has yet to wear.

Weightlessness, power, carelessness, all these things buoy him into the air. They float his consciousness above mundane expectations and the hounding boredom. The world goes quiet in the clouds, and his mind soars with his body.

Flight had functioned for years, keeping the wretched, dark confines of his head from consuming the rest. Sherlock had dared to think it sufficient, but he was wrong.

Wings sagging on his back, Sherlock bends beneath the bed, reaching for the package hiding in the dark depths. His fingers find it quickly and grasp around it tightly.

He casts a searching eye at the door, but his room occupies the highest floor, an attic really, and no one (not even the maid) dares to venture up here besides Mycroft, who is most definitely in the kitchen now, devouring some of Mummy’s Christmas Cake.

The package is not heavy; it is innocuous and plain, wrapped in simple cloth.

Sherlock had purchased it as an early birthday present to himself (but more as a last resort than sentimentality). He’d held off now, from opening the contents. Hoping maybe.

What a stupid waste of time.

Now, he unwraps the innards of the package and lets them fall onto the bed unceremoniously.

The needle is clean, and the small, square paper package of heroin sits with a bright green dealer stamp, grinning up from the embroidered afghan.  

Neither is pretty or elegant in any way, but Sherlock doesn’t need them to be.

He just needs an escape.

 _Water_ , he thinks. _I’ll need water as well_.

Without preamble, Sherlock rises from the bed to fetch some.

The question is forced to wait, pushed into the back corners of his mind, answerless. 


	3. lost and found

> **i.**

It starts with a twitch, and John tells himself he’s imagining things. His back and shoulders itch and ache, but he refuses to call attention to the discomfort by words, scratching or stretching. He just tightens his jaw whenever the feeling surges and wills the sensation away.

It doesn’t work.

John can no longer sit still in class or sleep comfortably in any position. His teachers become increasingly frustrated and Harry keeps pounding on his door in the night to tell him to _shut up_. But most distracting and troubling of all is the plaguing anticipation building in his gut. As if he’s been waiting for this moment for a long while.

For two days straight, John keeps his arms twisted firmly over his chest just to keep them from scratching horrible gouges into his back; jaw locked closed to keep from yelling. His whole body is wound tight, like there he is compressed of too much mass and ready to burst.

John refuses to look.

He has lived over twelve years, smoothing down the flat, empty plane of his back and asserting that that is _fine._ That he is a perfectly functional human being _without_ wings, and he won’t be ruining that now just because some ghost pains have returned to haunt him.

Harry looks at him strangely, but his father doesn’t seem to notice. He’s been spending more and more time locked inside his study with an old, torn picture of his wife.

Now, for once, this obliviousness suits John’s favor, and he almost believes he can hide this new development away. That he can sink back into anonymity and normalcy.

He can’t.

On the third afternoon of this torture, as John walks home from the run-down convenience store down the street from his home burdened with the sorts of odds and ends that the rest of the Watsons never get but use whenever John is bothered to fetch them, the itching has turned to tension. Just this morning, as he tugged a jumper on, he’d brushed up against the swollen lumps on his backs and his breakfast had thrust up his throat. His back feels like a water balloon, but John forces that out of his mind and focuses on his feet, one in front of the other.

He makes it to the alley behind his house before the mounting pressure in his shoulders _bursts._

John drops the bags then drops to his knees.

There is pain, but there is shock and that casts a blanket over everything else because John’s back has just exploded—like some psychotic sci-fi film—there’s plasma mixed with blood and chunky unmentionables heaving out of the wound pushed out by heavy, wet—

John tears the jumper off, heart racing because there’s no way— _no way—_ not possible—his shoulders _can’t_ be shaking out wings and his fingers _can’t_ be picking blood clots out of feathers.

Someone screams.

John registers that it is not him.

Someone with the same piercing, high-pitched wail screams again.

John looks up sluggishly, away from the white, white wings draping over him, and sees the source of the howl.

It’s a girl. The girl who lives next door, his mind slowly supplies. She has braided blonde hair and wide, wide blue eyes. Her mouth is stretched so far open it resembles a black hole.

She is taking out the trash—there’s a full, lumpy trash bag in her hands, and then, then there isn’t. It’s slamming into the ground like a missile and she’s running (away? Closer? He can’t tell)

He doesn’t bother finding out either.

Splashing through the spray of unmentionables on the pavement, John sprints to his house and doesn’t stop running until he’s safely behind the slammed shut door of his room.

It’s so impossible. It’s so impossible, but the reality of the situation hangs on his back and thrums through his bones.

For the first time, John Watson is whole.

He is whole and he is anything but angry. He is delirious. Maybe with pain but maybe with something greater.

John feels strong, stronger than fists against teeth or teeth against skin. He is powerful.

His wings, of their own accord, give a mighty flap, splattering the remnants of gore onto his bedroom walls, and John collapse in hopeless, desperate laughter.

_Wings_.

As much as he has assured himself of _not_ needing them, of being perfectly acceptable without them, he was so, _so_ wrong. He has needed them. He has needed them like the tides need the moon, and he wonders, back to the wall and chest heaving, if he had ever truly existed before this moment.

The wings are slightly wet but already drying, and John can’t take his eyes off them. Though there is no clear memory in his head of these wings, he knows they are _his._ He knows if they had grown and matured as they were supposed to, _this_ is what he would have. These beautiful, large, white wings. They are soft to the eye and rise far above his head outstretched. To the touch they are hardy, with stretching primaries that are neither short nor small. They are a wide expanse; the sort of wings meant for soaring and sweeping.

John shakes his shoulders and the coverts shiver.

This should be new; these new appendages foreign, but in his head, it’s as though they existed there, on his back, all along.

He smiles, and he can’t stop.

_Wings. Him._  He has wings.

The front door squeals open (John really needs to fix that) and the mutterings of his father drift down the hall and into his room.

Suddenly, John is assaulted by a need to throw open the door and charge out into the hallway. He wants to preen now that he has the chance.

_Mine_ , he wants to declare, _my wings._

Bloody hell, _his wings._

How is he supposed to explain that?

The triumph is abruptly replaced by panic.

“ _John_ ,” his father calls.

Of course it’s _today_ that he has to take an interest in his son.

John’s shirt hangs in ruins, torn irreparably when his wings burst through. John pulls it off jerkily, and throws it into the corner of his tiny room, behind the bed.

What is he going to do?

Artifice. He has to hide them, he decides.

The footsteps are getting closer. John tries to wipe the gunk off his walls while simultaneously seeking out a new shirt. He manages a so-so job on the room but soon finds that slipping into his shirt (wing-slits sewn shut because John has never need them before) is borderline impossible.

His wings hang to mid-calf when shuttered.

The next shout for his name is abrasive and too close.

John hates it, the feeling of feathers wrenched out of place, but he does it nonetheless, forcing his wings into an untenable position, pressed against his spine and into the backs of his pants.

His father prods open the door just seconds later.

“Alright?” he asks, in atypical fashion.

There is no satisfactory honest answer so John grunts and concentrates on keeping his wings still and compact. The strain makes him shake.

“Alright,” his father says but the end of the conversation doesn’t come since he’s still hanging in John’s doorway, peering intently like this room hasn’t existed for the past decade.

The back of John’s shirt is climbing up, feathers peeking out. He smoothes it down as subtly as possible. “Do you need something?” he demands, trying to keep his voice amiable.

The answer comes too fast. “No, no. I’ll just let you get back to your…your business.” His father casts one furtive look, chased away by guilt before stepping out and shutting the door behind him.

John breathes out and his shirt rises up over his shoulders.

_How the hell is he supposed to hide this?_

> **ii.**

The days are gray.

They are colorless, and they are unbearably long.

They are purgatory, and they are hell.

The night is a firework.

It is a glimmering opal—a diamond—a deep, pure ruby.

It is a universe of swirling colors and twisting asteroid belts.

It flashes like a dying star and calls like a black hole.

Sherlock sleeps as much of the day to nonexistence as is possible and spends the rest chewing the ends of his nails to nubs, counting down the seconds.

He resides in a palace of dirty mattresses and shimmering needles with a revolving door of faces—so many faces—that, even with the most intricate of details, they mean nothing.

He lays down to rest in piles of emaciated limbs, the scent of alcohol and the padding of thin, fraying wings.

This is his kingdom. It is his home.

He is in no way regent of the lighting in his veins or the smoke in the air, but he embraces the high in them same way he used to embrace the clouds.

No one knows his name here. They see his wings and _ooh_ and _ahh_ then shoot up once more and dissolve into stardust.

He isn’t working here. He is not figuring or deducing or shamming or manipulating or _thinking_.

He isn’t doing anything at all.

He is suspended in nothingness—surrounded by nothingness—pulled down by nothingness—and comforted by nothingness.

There are brown eyes and green wings and blue hair and autumn feathers. There is the soft brush of hands through his hair and the whisper of words that sing heavy through the air and bypass his mind completely.

He doesn’t have to _do_ anything in this effortless bliss. No commitment to stuffy classrooms. No disappointed stares. No pretending.

He has no responsibilities. Not even to himself, and sometimes, he forgets to breath.

It’s on accident. Sometimes his head floats away from his body and doesn’t return but for the rhythmic thumps on his chest and green uniformed bodies. Sometimes he competes with the walls to see who can hold their breath the longest. Sometimes the air just leaves his lungs and no one bothers to retrieve it for him.

It’s all on accident. Careless and fun, but just an accident—until it isn’t.

And then the delightful buffer of nothingness is shattered.

* * *

“You will never do that again.”

A thunderous tap of a steel umbrella against the floor. Mummy sobbing just beyond the limits of the room. Heavy breathing and the quiet of true rage.

Sherlock turns his face into the scentless, thin linens.

“You are ruining yourself, Sherlock, right before their eyes. “ Mummy and Father, he means. “I will not allow it.” Mycroft clears his throat—“I was foolish. I made a mistake, letting you carry on like this, for so long. I thought,” he pauses, then shakes the thought away and presses on, “You are done.”

Sherlock presses his eyes shut and wishes for oblivion, but the world doesn’t stop, and it doesn’t go away.

There is no easy escape now. No tricky break-outs or get-away routes.

The lights are too bright. Mycroft is too loud. Everything is too much. His tongue is dead in his mouth. His head aches, and his mind is on fire, finally online after such an extended (blessed) hibernation.

His cheeks are wet, and his throat is seizing.

The question haunts once again. He is trapped, stuck in a prison of his own creation with nothing left to curse but his own name.

“We’ll fix this,” Mycroft says. “It will be done.”

Sherlock presses his eyes shut and wishes for nothing. 


	4. turning over the horizon

John spends that first impossible night holed up in his room with his wings, researching and making plans. There’s the first obvious question—how did things that previously did not exist come back into being? It sounds like a fairytale, and when John searches through the books and notes (from Physiology and History classes) he remembers the myths.

Every wing color has a talent, a special ability, and no two are identical. Except for one.

White.  There are circling tales mixed with legends and fables, and the only real documented cases are shrouded in mystery.

John can manage to connect the dots.

His wings healed themselves.

White is not only linked with purity but healing and immortality.

The instances of this color are scattered, surrounded by death and tragedy.

John’s mother rears up in his head unbidden, and those fateful words echo once more, _“You’ll understand when you’re older. I’m protecting you.”_

He doesn’t see how she could have known. Her wings were a dull, wood brown, but whatever psychotic plan she’d had failed.

The wings were back, and John had no idea what to do with them.

The history book has put him off with too many accounts of young men and women spirited off never to be seen again, or, in a few horrific cases, plucked entirely. John could say they’re just myths, but he hasn’t gotten through life being gullible or careless.

His first instinct of hiding seems the best route, and the majority of the night’s remainder is spent on that goal.

Eventually, he finds a way, an uncomfortable way, but John can’t exactly be picky here. He uses the bandages stocked from numerous lost fights to bind the top joint of both wings below his shoulder, then, forcing the coverts and secondaries over each other, he binds the primaries flat from around his back to his stomach and chest. The biding would be useless in any tight cloths but John’s always preferred heavier, looser jumpers anyways. The only real trouble would come about in summer, but that’s months away.

John has to make it through the rest of this week first.

When the sun rises, John is still awake, eyes red but hyped up on adrenalin. The first test is Harry.

John is stiffly making breakfast (beans and toast) when she finally emerges from the abyss of her room.

She’s quiet as she pads to the table, but her only comment is a spiteful, “Disgusting,” at the sight of John’s plate and sniff when she pours herself a full glass of milk.

John rolls his eyes at her, and the tension bleeds out of his chest.

The school day goes by much the same. No one speaks to him, and he speaks to no one. There’s a strange feeling when the students’ wings brush against his own restrained feathers but there are no incidents.

John’s steps are light on his way home, a smile teasing on his mouth. Perhaps there is a solution to this after all. Perhaps life will go on.

“Is that the one?”

John would have disregarded the gruff voice (plenty of those around this area) but for the familiar squeak that follows.

“I’m positive that’s him.”

_The screamer,_ he thinks, _the girl from the alley_.

He’s running before he can turn around, through the crowded street to the back alleys of the city.

There are shouts and cries behind him so he doesn’t stop. He’s had plenty of experience running for his life; he doesn’t bother wasting time yelling for help that wouldn’t come anyway.

“Oi, Hold up boy!”

Not sodding likely.

John’s not the flighty sort, too compact and solid for that, and the wings wrapped around his chest are not helping.

The footsteps behind him thud harsh and fast, but after a few seconds of hurried pursuit, they disappear.

He thinks for a blessed moment that they’ve given up. Then, the wing beats begin.

The stream of curses through John’s head would make a nun faint.

_Flying?_ Yes, everyone in the world but him (until recently) had wings, but it’s public courtesy that no one above the age of ten really uses them outside of their own homes or specially designated places, like gyms or open-roofed buildings. Cities just aren’t made for it, especially low-class ghettos. No one wants a wing smacking the back of their heads and giving them a concussion.

This doesn’t seem to be a problem for his pursuers.

As his feet assault the pavement, John toys with the idea of bursting free of his self-made bondage and taking to the sky himself.

Three problems daunt him.

One, he doesn’t know who’s chasing him besides the girl who witnessed last night’s horrors.

Two, he doesn’t know why. One could assume it’s because of his wings, but still. For what purpose? It was pretty disgusting, the whole ordeal, appendages popping out and all. Why would anyone be after him because of it?

And three, he’s never flown a day in his life and a cramped alley doesn’t seem like an excellent place for a first run.

Bu it is becoming apparent that running isn’t a sustainable means of escape. The bastards are overtaking him rapidly.

They’re approaching the turn of the alley, back into the main street or further into the dumps. However, all choices are taken out of his hands as the air whooshes around his lungs and there’s suddenly at least 150 extra pounds of human on his back.

Their combined momentum sends both of them to the ground, but his attacker has the upper hand and John is pinned effectively to the ground by a tall, ginger man smelling heavily of alcohol.

There’re only two more people in the alley, and both of them promptly land as soon as John’s restrained. He was right, it’s the girl who screamed at him last night, accompanied from smelly alcoholic and another guy that resembles her, but taller and definitely more mannish. His hair is a darker shade blond than hers, but their wings are the closely the same hue of blackish blue. 

The man with his arms wrapped around John’s arms breathes heavy, foul air into his face. “Got ‘im,” he says snottily.

John refrains from sighing.

The other man, who must be the girl’s brother, looks on skeptically. He turns to his sibling and demands, “Are you positive? He doesn’t…” He gestures down at the pair of them on the ground, and John must swallow his outrage.

Beneath his shirt, his wings are keening for freedom.

The girl shakes her head yes, but her eyes look wary. “That’s him…I don’t know what he’s done. He must be hiding them somehow.”

Her brother doesn’t look convinced.

John decides to speak up. Pushing as far as possible from the stench on top of him, he says loudly, “I’m right here. You could just ask me.”

“ _Shut up_ ,” the man holding him hisses.

John calculates the odds of him being able to overpower him with just his bare hands from this position, but the man keeps on talking, hissing into his ear and spitting bile.

“We know exactly what you are. No amount of lying’s gonna get you outta this.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, the man’s pawing at John’s clothes. Using a knife that John definitely did not see before, he cuts a straight line right up the front of his jumper.

John struggles to get free, wary of the sharp point above him, but before he can shove his way out of sticky hands and rancid breath the damage is done. Clothing, hanging off his shoulders, he is exposed.

His feathers rejoice in the feeling of fresh air, and strain against the bindings harder.

The alley is silent.

Then—

“A bloody miracle,” the one with the knife breathes. The siblings seem to be caught in a spell, but he isn’t affected. Brandishing the knife, he treads forward threateningly.

John weighs his options in a split second, then does what he does best: acts.

He rips through the bandages constraining his wings. They surge forward immediately, and he relishes in the power of one single, mighty flap of his wings before falling on the small man waving the point of a knife he obviously doesn’t know how to wield.

The wings must help, he thinks vaguely, because he disarms the man with minimum effort and slams him up against a wall with only one arm but still manages to knock him unconscious.

It’s over so quickly that John has to stare at the stolen blade in his hand to pull himself back down to earth. His wings twitter rebelliously, stretching for the open air.

The brother blinks at the fallen, crumpled body of his comrade, then charges.

This second fight is over even faster than the first.

John has never fought with these wings before, but when he blocks the first wild swing, his left wing sweeps forward and John follows with it. Together, they knock the unfortunate attacker’s feet right out from under him. His head smacks the pavement and his eyes flutter shut.

_Power_.

John clenches and unclenches his fist. His heart won’t stop racing.

“Please. Please, I’m sorry.” It’s the screamer. Her wings are held tight up against her neck, but she isn’t backing away.

He knows he could fly forward, wings scraping against the dirty walls, and incapacitate her as he did the others, but there’s fear in her eyes, and the swim of panic and anger drowning him has receded.

“Why did you come after me?” He asks.

She shakes her head, but answers. “Your wings. They’re supposed to heal…I thought you’d help me—us. I only want a few feathers. _Please_.”

Myths and fairytales.

“How do you know?” John demands. “What makes you think I can do anything at all?”

Again, she shakes her head. “My family. They tell stories, I just,” she lifts her eyes, and they pull at his heart. “My mother is going to die.”

John flinches so hard he drops the knife.

The girl’s eyes seem to light up, she lets her wings fall down around her shoulders and steps closer. “You’ll help me?”

“I don’t…”

“All I need are a few feathers. That it.”

John is now the one backing up. “Just a few?” he parrots weakly. _Where did the power go_?

She smiles convincingly and nods. Blonde hair bounces. “Please?” But it’s no longer a plea. She’s close enough now, and grabs a clump of his coverts.

He jerks away. “No!” Her face falls. “Just—let me.”

“Thank you,” she breathes, “Thank you so much. You don’t know what this means to me.”

Her words urge him on as he grabs two feathers. What the hell is he doing? John doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to pull apart these new, beautiful things, yet his hands tighten and jerk anyways.  

The feathers scream as they leave him. He screams in return.

The girl holds out her hands and receives her gift with unabashed glee.

As soon as the deed is done, it’s like a cold shower. He jumps away from her, shaking. None of that was his doing. He’d pulled out those feathers with his own arms, but it feels like he’s been possessed. Compelled.

The girl stares at her open palm with the two arm length feathers. “Just two?” she asks.

Her voice is disappointed, and in that moment, John knows that if she asks for more, he will give them to her. If she asked for his whole wing, he would chop it off without hesitation.

“Leave,” he commands. His voice wavers. He clears his throat. “Take your brother and go.”

“But—“

John pins her with his gaze. “Now.”

Even if she’s about a foot smaller and carrying the feathers under one arm, she hefts up her brother’s weight and begins a lopsided, hurry from the alley.

John doesn’t look away until her footsteps vanish. As soon as they do, his legs wobble ominously, and he kneels, bracing his palms against the ground, and extending his wings for balance.

His heart won’t stop racing now, but it is no longer from the elation of strength or might, but from fear.

Even with his back to the wall and five guys trying to get in a punch, he’s never felt so trapped.

The third attacker doesn’t stir from his stupor, but John imagines him waking. He imagines him startling into consciousness again, and making his demand.

_“Feathers,” he’d scoff. “I want your whole_ wing _.”_

A few nails on his hand break as his fingers dig into the unyielding concrete.

He would give it up. In his soul he knows, he would.

Not because of any desire to help, or from guilt, but because he must.

The air must be strangling him because John can’t breathe.

He thinks of the stories. Fortune’s white winged prisoners. Lives ruined and taken. His mother.

The torn feathers ache but when John peeks at the spot from the corner of his eye, the empty spaces have already been filled—the feathers regrown.

The replacement sinks low in his gut.

Is that it? He has these beautiful, amazing things, just to give them out to anyone who asks? A slave to their desires?

John Watson is a freeman. He is in control. He is strong. He is resilient.

In the dirt, in the afternoon light, in the presence of an insentient drunk, a resolution is made.

John reaches for the blade, dropped what seems ages ago, and grits his teeth.

He never even got to try flying. Not once.

The blade is sharp and does its work quickly with no lingering.

The pain is not so merciful. 


End file.
